


Two Sides Of The Coin

by Andian



Series: A Kind Of Magic [3]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Humor, M/M, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 12:24:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10764216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/pseuds/Andian
Summary: Jamie was not looking forward to this conversation. But as a captain there were certain things he had to do. And certain things Tyler shouldn't.





	Two Sides Of The Coin

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the same verse as the rest of the series though once again no real connection and it can be read as a stand-alone
> 
> Writing for this started some time ago, so it's not up to date with current events team-wise.

Jamie deeply breathed in. And out. And in again.

It was a delaying tactic and he knew it. This was his job as a captain. As a friend too, he supposed, though mostly as a captain.

Through the door and three walls he could hear Tyler on his treadmill. If he concentrated he was able to make out Tyler’s breath, going faster with the physical exertion, sounding similar to the one time Jamie had heard him…

 

He stopped himself right there. Bad thoughts, he thought, very bad thoughts. And also the main reason this would be so awkward. 

 

Another breath and he knocked loudly on the door. He could hear the treadmill stopping and Tyler walking through the flat. It was getting easier to make out Tyler’s sounds. Soon enough Jamie figured he would be able to pick up his heartbeat, just like he was able to do with Jordie.

 

Tyler smiled widely at him when he had finally made it to the door.

 

“Hey, come in! Thought we were supposed to meet up for dinner today?” he said, sounding happy nonetheless.

Jamie was glad it was normal Tyler opening the door and then he felt bad about that. Tyler didn’t really care that much about phrases like that but there were flyers and guidelines and twitter trends, most of them hard to ignore, about what kind of words were appropriate and what kinds weren’t.

He forced away the thoughts as he entered Tyler’s flat. 

Tyler dropped on the couch and Jamie joined him, wrinkling his nose.

“You maybe want to take a shower first,” he suggested.

Tyler shrugged.

“You smelt worse,” he said and Jamie had to agree. Some of the stuff that passed as health-protein potions these days smelt, looked and tasted like dragon excrements.

It would have given him five more minutes of delaying the undelayable though.

“Wanna order food and watch a movie?” Tyler asked.

“Yes,” Jamie said automatically and then winced. “No. I mean later. Maybe.”

Tyler stared at him confused.

“You okay?” he asked

“Look, we need to … talk,” Jamie said and then bit his tongue immediately. He had tried to come up with a plan on how to approach this … situation and “We need to talk” had been second on the list of things to avoid saying at all cost.

“Ah,” Tyler said. He sounded weird, guarded and wary like Jamie had expected.

“Is this is about team stuff?” 

“No,” Jamie said. “Well kind of,” he then corrected. Tyler looked even more confused and Jamie inwardly sighed. Suddenly he really regretted not just asking Jordie to help with this. But he was pretty sure that Jordie would have said that this was a better discussion for two people with magic abilities. And no matter Jordie’s extraordinary high test-results for potential magic abilities he had yet to actually show any signs of them.

 

Didn’t stop the NHL from putting him through the same guidelines to prevent magical cheating as all the other magic users but that was the League for you. Tyler had to follow them too and it would be pretty hard for him to actually use his abilities unnoticed.

 

Well, that was the problem, wasn’t it?

“So it’s not about the team but it actually is?” Tyler asked, bringing him back to the situation at hand. 

“It’s about PR stuff,” Jamie said without really thinking and Tyler’s eye suddenly got hard. 

“I mean, not really PR stuff more like … you know appearance to … to the general public,” Jamie frantically continued, desperate to save at least some part of this ill-fated conversation. Tyler just looked away from him and Jamie did an amazing job of saying pretty much everything he had tried to avoid.

This was turning out more difficult than he had thought. He had no problem telling Jason to try to silence the music always faintly echoing around him – and really Jamie was still half-convinced that was a joke everybody was playing on him, nobody actually had magic powers that stupid – but otherwise he did try to avoid talking directly about magical abilities. 

The team tried to keep it mostly low-key too. It wasn’t like talking about it was a taboo but they were also still a bit away from having one of their star players and captain film a video on how to make organic potions with self-grown ingredients. Though watching Kane sneaking around behind Toews’ back and destroying all his hard work with a simple touch that negotiated all magic effects of the potions had been quite of amusing.

 

Point was this was hard and Jamie hated doing it. Desperately he tried to remember all the good sentences and words that he had come up with that would make this less embarrassing. 

“It’s about you turning into a woman to fuck guys you meet in clubs,” is what came out of his mouth instead.

 

This really wasn’t working out like he had hoped it would. 

Tyler stared at him, mouth slightly opened.

 

“I… what… how do you even…?” he managed to get out after a few moments of very awkward silence.

Jamie sighed and gestured to his ears. Tyler raised an eyebrow and then flushed red in obvious mortification.

“Oh god, did you hear it when I…” he started.

“No, no!” Jamie said, equally mortified. At least not when you were with other people, a treacherous part of him whispered that he usually managed to ignore.

“At the door, you know. In the morning … afterwards,” he said. “I mean I know your voice,” and how you clench your teeth when you lose a puck, your footsteps in the hallway to the locker room, your cheer from the bench when I get a goal but well that was a conversation not just for another day but rather for never.

“And I know … I know your other voice too,” Not really well though. Tyler took care to not grow boobs and female genitalia in public. Usually. Which made this whole business that had started up a month or so ago both infuriating and confusing. 

“Look, it’s totally up to you but what you do in your free time but you know … I mean …” Jamie trailed off really not sure how exactly to go on from here. 

Technically it was completely up to Tyler. Technically nobody should care what he did in his free time and what he looked like doing it. Technically all kind of magic was supposed to be equal. 

“I’ll stop doing it.” Tyler said, not looking at him.

Practically Jamie could imagine all the posters and insults fans of enemy teams would come up with if they found about Tyler’s magic. Hell, he didn’t have to imagine. The one time Tyler somehow got stuck in his female form had been enough. 

At least they had been able to pretend the transformation itself had been a curse too. Considering it happened during the same time somebody had also cursed the entirety of the Canes in a rather unoriginal way with wind powers the media had been a bit too distracted to further investigate. 

Tyler hadn’t cared much back then. He looked like he cared now though. His shoulders were tense and he still stared at the floor. 

Jamie swallowed heavily.

 

“Look, you don’t have to stop,” it blurted out of him. “I mean, maybe just don’t bring them back to your flat or something?”

Something inside of him twisted at the thought of Tyler, whatever version, going back to a stranger’s place to fuck.

“If you want to do it, you totally can, just be a bit more … discrete?” he continued nonetheless. He wasn’t quite sure why Tyler was doing this or why he seemed to be more than just embarrassed by Jamie finding out but well…

He might be Tyler’s captain. But he was also his friend. 

“No, it’s okay,” Tyler said. He looked at Jamie and threw him a smile so fake Jamie wasn’t sure who exactly was supposed to buy it. 

“I was just a bit curious, you know? It’s kind of like having a car you sometimes drive but never really for more than just to the grocery store? And you just sometimes want to push the gas petal down and…”

“I get it, I get it!” Jamie interrupted, fearing whatever direction this metaphor was going. 

“Let’s just pretend this never happened?” he suggested. There was a flash of something Jamie couldn’t identify in Tyler’s eyes before he grinned.

“Yes, sure,” he said. He was still avoiding Jamie’s eyes though. Sometimes Jamie wondered if his life would be any easier if he could also hear thoughts. Though there were probably no league-approved earplugs strong enough to allow him to play with that kind of power.

He sighed inwardly and decided to just move on.

“Food?” he asked. “You can order,” he then added because this entire thing had turned out even more embarrassing then he had thought.

Tyler grinned.

“You’ll regret that,” he said. 

“I already do,” Jamie answered, only half-joking. There was an awkward pause and Jamie cursed himself a bit. 

“Look, take a shower and I’ll order food, okay?” he said. “The usual?”

“Yeah. The usual.” Tyler said and then he walked towards his bathroom without another word, leaving Jamie to stare after him and curse the awkwardness of it all. 

He sighed again, out loud this time and told himself that Jordie would never get any details about this. Then he reached for his phone.

At least he tried to. It wasn’t in his pocket though. 

Jamie frowned and tried his other pocket. He came up empty again. 

“Tyler!” he yelled. “I think I forgot my phone, can I borrow yours?”

Tyler didn’t answer though and the sound of the shower Jamie could hear coming from Tyler’s bathroom three rooms away explained why.

He could probably go back to this flat and look for his own phone but why bother, really. Tyler had been in his sport clothes, so his phone was probably still in his training room. 

There was a pile of laundry when Jamie walked into the room and he’d roll his eyes if his flat didn’t look similar. He closed his eyes and focused his hearing. Electronics always hummed and mobile phones made a certain high-pitched noise that was annoying to be around too long.

He opened his eyes again when he heard it coming from a pair of trousers dropped next to the treadmill.

 

He picked it up, hand automatically reaching for the pocket to grab Tyler’s phone when he froze.

There was something beneath the pants. Bra, Jamie’s mind very unhelpfully corrected. There was a bra under the pants.

All Jamie could think about was Tyler in that bra. Black laces seemed weirdly fitting even though he had never seen Tyler’s female version in anything different than his usual clothes or a jersey.

Female Tyler looked a lot like male Tyler though. Abs and same hair cut included. Really from the back it was always kind of hard to tell the difference between Tyler’s two versions.

And suddenly all Jamie could think about was his Tyler in that bra.

“Hey, did you order?” Tyler suddenly asked behind him.

He hadn’t heard the shower stopping. Neither had he heard Tyler coming into the room.

There was some sort of irony to be appreciated here, but all Jamie really could do was turning around, bra still in his hand.

Tylor stared at the bra. Then he opened his mouth. Then he closed it again.

Jamie wished for a portal to open up and take him anywhere else but here. They had a game tomorrow but a few days, or weeks, spent at the North Pole sounded nice about now.

“I’m sure you look good in this,” he blurted out. “I mean in your female form. Not that you don’t look good normally too.”

Correction, the North Pole was way too close. He should be reaching for something like the moon.

Then Tyler suddenly laughed. 

“You’re making this really hard, you know?” he said.

“Making what hard?” Jamie asked because this conservation had already reached a level of terrible it was unlikely to recover from. He could at least play along, he supposed. 

“The whole not going out and finding some guy to screw me thing.”

“I don’t…” Jamie stared and Tyler shook his head.

“Look, just listen,” he interrupted Jamie. “Just so you’re not the only one totally embarrassing yourself.”

Jamie wanted to protest but he was still holding the bra.

“So, the whole screwing people thing was me kind of trying out if I’m into that,” Tyler said. “You know, having sex as a woman.”

Jamie didn’t know but then his powers meant that he’d get a splitting headache every time he was in a room with more than ten people talking. Not suddenly finding himself in need of a bra.

“And I tried it out because I thought that you might have sex with me if I was a chick.” 

 

The last sentence came rushing out of Tyler’s mouth so quickly it took Jamie a moment to understand it.

“Having sex with you,” he repeated blandly. “While you’re a woman.”

Tyler looked away.

“It’s stupid, I know,” he said. “I just thought it wouldn’t be fair to keep lying and you kind of deserve the truth and I thought you had noticed that the guys all looked kind of like you and this was…”

“I’d also have sex with you while you’re a guy.” Jamie interrupted. 

It stopped Tyler mid-track. And they were back to staring at each other.

“This didn’t go like I had planned it,” Jamie said.

The corner of Tyler’s mouth twitched.

“You planned this?” he asked.

“Parts of it. The plan got a bit derailed.”

“Do you still want food?” Tyler asked. Jamie narrowed his eyes.

“I feel we should talk about this,” he said. “The sex part, you know.”

“We totally can. But food first. And then talking. And … other stuff,” Tyler was wiggling his eyebrows at the last part and Jamie told himself that he would insist on talking.

After food. And other stuff.

Jamie breathed in deeply. And then he smiled at Tyler.

“Let’s do that.”

And briefly he could hear Tyler’s heart beating faster and his own echoing its beats.


End file.
